THE BOOK OF HIDDEN THINGS

A gripping thriller with a vivid vein of magic running through it, a story about friendship and landscape, love and betrayal.

Friends Fabio, Mauro, Tony and Art head out one night to the outskirts of their southern Italian hometown, Casalfranco, to test out Art’s new telescope…

We found ourselves in an expanse of scrub – clay-red earth and spiky bushes, criss-crossed by drystone walls marking the boundaries of fields. We were surrounded on all sides by the gnarled silhouettes of olive groves in the distance, as if the trees trapped us in the middle of a secret henge. It was a desolate, unforgiving place.

“We’re lucky the wind calmed down,” Mauro commented. Art whispered, “Look at the moon.” The moon was immense. I am aware this is in part my imagination. Memory is like Alice’s medicines; it makes things bigger and smaller at whim, and that night looms so big that everything is oversized. But part of it is true. By some trick of perspective the moon did look immense, a luminous hole in the night sky. Mauro and Tony left the Vespas at the edge of the unpaved road and we walked on into the open countryside.

There are no marked paths in Salento, no kissing gates or gracious stiles, only drystone walls, with occasional openings in them, either made on purpose or caused by a collapse. This countryside is not made for walks. It ravages you with wind in winter, it burns you down in summer, and the only reason why one would possibly want to walk here is toil – or to follow a crazy friend with a telescope. It had not rained for almost two months, and what little moisture there was in the dirt came from the sea. The moon gave the thirsty land a purple hue. Art had forbidden the use of torches (he said our eyes had to get accustomed to the dark, to make the most of the telescope), so we had to rely on moonlight to negotiate our way between brambles and rocks. It was easier than I thought it would be; I hadn’t realised how bright a full moon can be. Tony howled. It made me jump. “Fuck you.” “Why, don’t you want to call in the werewolves?”

I was uneasy. Without factoring werewolves in, Casalfranco had its share of flesh-and-bone unwholesome characters, and, honestly? That night, in that place, I wasn’t so sure I would count them out. “Here,” Art said. We were on a comparatively elevated position. Ahead of us, after miles of scrubland and drystone walls, was a little deserted road, the only sign of the modern world in sight. After that was the sea, moonlit and speckled with waves. Art and I started immediately to assemble the telescope, while Tony and Mauro rolled a joint, opened the wine and got out the food. The joint had been smoked and a new one had been rolled by the time the telescope was ready. It was a stocky white tube on a tripod, with a smaller tube on top of it, and a panoply of wheels.

“The small tube is the finderscope,” Art explained. “It has a broader field of view than the main body. By rolling this wheel, you see, you align the finderscope with the main body. Then you use the finderscope to find what you want to look at, and only then do you look into the telescope.”

Tony said, “The moon is bigger than Mauro’s mum’s ass. Can’t be that difficult to aim at it with the big tube.” “Yeah? Here, try without the finderscope.” Tony plastered his eye on one end of the telescope. He shuffled it around a bit, then said, “Okay, I give up.”

Art took his place. “An object as big as the moon, you could find it, but it’s quicker with the finderscope.” He shuffled the telescope towards a clump of olive trees. “To align finderscope and telescope, you aim them at a terrestrial object and…”

Art lifted his head, still looking at the olive grove, and frowned. “What’s wrong?” Mauro asked. “I thought I saw something.” Art squinted

i could hear my heart thumping, but no sound came from the grove

into the telescope again. “A movement.” “It’s the weed,” I said. Art shook his head and drew back from the telescope. “I’ll be right back.” He started towards the olive grove. “You guys stay and watch the gear.”

None of us went with him. Why? I have been asked over and over again. Isn’t it obvious? We were all too scared. Three is company. Two, not so much. Art didn’t mind being alone, but Art was used to living in open countryside. We considered ourselves townies.

“Go!” Tony shouted behind him, as Art half walked, half ran towards the olive grove. “Show the werewolves who’s boss!” His quips fell flat.

Mauro was trying to adjust the telescope. “This damn thing,” he muttered. “Can’t make it work.”

I didn’t need the telescope to see Art get to the tree line, hesitate one moment, and then step into the grove and out of sight. I squinted to make out what he could have seen. I have gone through those moments a million times, both on my own and during the investigation, but honestly: I only saw Art, until I didn’t see him anymore. Art shouted. We all sprang back. Then – silence. “Art…?” Tony said. “Art!” Mauro called. Art didn’t reply. Tony said, “What the fuck…?”

We looked at each other. My skin was turning into scales. If I was uneasy before, I was rapidly sliding down towards full-fledged terror. “We should…” I started, then I stopped. We should go and see what happened, I was going to say. We all knew that, but no one wanted to make the first step.

Tony whispered, “He’ll get bored.”

“You think it’s a prank?” Mauro asked. “What else?” I was tempted to call out Art’s name one more time, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to call attention to myself, even though I didn’t know whose attention I didn’t want to call. If only we were braver, or more generous, we would have moved sooner, and perhaps we would have found Art before it was too late. We were very young, that is all I can say. As you grow up, you stockpile a lot of if onlys.

Eventually we managed to unfreeze. Tony put the cork back on the wine bottle and brandished the bottle as a club, and, thus armed, we walked cautiously towards the grove. Olive trees live for centuries, and the older they are, the more twisted they get; these ones were positively ancient. Thick and warped, they looked like the damned in Gustave Doré’s illustrations to Dante’s Inferno – one of my father’s favourite books.

We stood on the tree line, as on the threshold of a temple, not daring to enter.

“Art?” Tony called. “We left your telescope behind. Unattended.”

Mauro gestured for him to shut up. Listen, he mouthed. I could hear my heart thumping. I could hear my friends breathing. But no noise came from inside the grove. In that perfect silence, I would have heard Art, or anybody else, in there. Or would I? I had no inclination to step inside and see for myself. The grove gave off a sense of danger, and not the sort of Hollywood danger you defeat with some wit and a brawl. It was a stranger crawling into your bedroom, a priest forcing a boy to his knees and not to pray; it was real danger, the one that takes something away from you. And suddenly I couldn’t stand it anymore. I turned around and dashed towards the Vespas, running with all the energy I could gather, running running running. Mauro and Tony ran behind me. We arrived at the mopeds short of breath. While Mauro and Tony fumbled for the keys, I cast a glance at the olive grove: it was motionless; not bigger, not stranger, not darker than any other clump of trees. I have been asked by so many people to explain what happened that made us run, and I always give the same answer: nothing. We didn’t see anything, we didn’t hear anything, and yet we were afraid. No, not of ghosts, I had to say endlessly to smart-asses with or without a uniform. Whether ghosts exist or not, you know what they are supposed to be; they have a name, a definition. But we didn’t know what we were afraid of; we were just afraid, and our incapacity to put a name on that fear made it infinitely worse. I don’t know the reason why we were afraid, but I will swear, until the day I die, that it was a good one.

To find out what happens next, pick up The Book Of Hidden Things, out now from Titan Books (RRP £8.99). Ebook also available. www.titanbooks.com